1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a recording/reproducing apparatus which can simultaneously operate a plurality of recordable/reproducible mediums such as a hard disk(s), and recordable/reproducible digital versatile disc(s) (DVD).
2. Description of the Related Art
In recent years, optical disc players, for playing back optical discs with image, sound and other recorded data have been developed. These players, for LD or video CD, for example, have been widely utilized for the purpose of viewing movies, singing at Karaoke bars, etc.
At present, a DVD standard has been proposed in which an internationally standardized moving image coding expert group (MPEG2) system is used, and further an AC3 audio compression system is employed.
This DVD standard supports the MPEG2 scheme for a moving picture compression method according to the system layer of MPEG2, and also supports the AC3 audio compression scheme as well as the MPEG audio compression scheme for an audio compression method. Further, in this DVD standard, control data (Navigation pack) is additionally adapted so that a special reproduction such as a fast-forward or reverse reproduction etc. can be performed. Furthermore, in this DVD standard, the standard of IS09660 and Micro UDF is supported so that the data of a disc can be read by a computer.
Moreover, as an own standard of media, subsequent to the standard of DVD-ROM which is the media of DVD-video, the standard of DVD-RAM (storage capacity of about 4.7 GB) is also completed, and DVD-RAM drives are beginning to spread as computer peripherals.
Additionally, at present, a DVD video standard which utilizes DVD-RAM and realizes a system capable of recording/reproducing information in real time, that is, a real time recording (RTR)-DVD standard is being completed, and a verification operation is also scheduled to end in the near future.
The standard is developed based on the DVD video standard now on the market. Furthermore, a file system corresponding to the RTR-DVD is also standardized.
On the other hand, a system is also considered in which a hard disk drive (HDD) built in the recording/reproducing apparatus is utilized to record/reproduce a broadcast signal. In the hard disk drive, data of 100 Gbytes or more can be recorded.
When the hard disk drive and DVD system are individually considered, both have advantages and disadvantages.
The hard disk drive is built into the recording/reproducing apparatus in a normal use mode, and cannot be removed. Therfore, it is impossible to store data infinitely. The amount of recording space sometime runs short. Moreover, a user cannot easily remove the drive out of the recording/reproducing apparatus. Therefore, it is impossible to take out the disk and reproduce the data recorded on the disk with another apparatus.
On the other hand, a recordable/reproducible DVD has a small storage capacity as compared with a hard disk. Moreover, it is impossible to record copy-protected information.